


You Can't

by Rasalahuge



Category: RWBY
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Immortality, Ozpin Needs a hug, Past Character Death, References to Abuse (non-explicit), References to Depression, References to Suicide (non-explicit), Reflection on the past, Victim Blaming, and what it means for the present, history repeats itself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-06
Updated: 2020-11-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:00:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27418414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rasalahuge/pseuds/Rasalahuge
Summary: It's not that he doesn't know they deserve the truth. Of course they do. It's more that he can't see that telling the truth would actually achieve anything. It never has before, why would it this time?He's old and tired and he's made so many mistakes, what's one more?(Heed the tags)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 42





	You Can't

**Author's Note:**

> I try not to come up with a list of things I want to see in new seasons of TV shows, because inevitably I'll enjoy them more if I don't. But. This once, I would like someone to show some empathy and reach out a hand to Ozpin. It didn't happen in volume 7, it's probably not going to happen in volume 8, but I'll hope for it anyway. Also, write an angst fic about why Oz could have perfectly valid (if somewhat selfish) reasons for not telling people the whole truth.

_He’s seen it before._

Weiryn tosses his head back, eyes proud and terrible, and demands to know why. Why they are fighting this unwinnable war for the sake of people who gladly treat his kind like animals and worse. Why should he give his life over to a doomed cause when his family, his own kind, need him? He doesn’t look back when he walks away and his silhouette is so similar to the brother of light, with his antlers tall and proud, that it hurts to watch. Weiryn becomes a warlord, fighting for his people to be acknowledged, fuelled by an angry hatred that is, in turn, fuelled by the secrets he carries. 

_He’ll see it again._

Oluwatobi is everything that is good about people, strong and passionate and determined and loyal. At least, she was in the beginning. Yet, carrying the weight of an entire kingdom, and all those lives, is a heavy burden and the secrets entrusted to her leave her feeling out of control and hesitant to reach out for help. She cracks and then breaks and turns into a shadow of herself, oppressing her people where once she guided and protected. In the end her people rise against her and she is yet another casualty. 

_And again._

Javier’s life has been an endless quest for meaning. His parents abused him and his semblance to protect their village and their other children. He wants something more, he wants someone to need and want him for his own sake and not his semblance, which keeps the Grim away. He promises to accept that there are secrets he can’t know, for his own safety, but when he learns them anyway he stares as though he is the one betrayed. He dies unceremoniously, hanging from the rafters, because he knows his despair would only bring the Grim down on his family. 

_And again._

Jessica is just a slip of a girl, her silver eyes bright with enthusiasm and a desire to fix the world. She reminds him so much of the adventurer he was, before Her, before everything. She promises they’ll find a way and he almost believes her, until her eyes are no longer dancing silver but glazed over and stained red with spilt blood. 

_A thousand years. Hundreds of lives.  
The same story, on repeat._

He dies by fire. He dies by poison. He dies to every different type of Grim in existence. He dies at the hands of Her minions. He dies screaming under torture. Once, for a change, he dies by his own hand.

He only ever dies of old age once. The time he gave up. The time the weight of everything became too much. The time he met four sisters, each as sweet and charming and beautifully flawed as each other. They gifted him with renewed faith and so he gifted them in return and, in spite of everything, finds it hard to regret even if it has given him one more thing to protect. One more thing to worry and chew over.

_It's not that he doesn’t care.  
It’s not that he doesn’t see people for who they are.  
Or that they don’t deserve to know._

_It’s just that he’s too tired to hope that this time will be different._

His reincarnations are all like-minded people, but they are also all people. Few of them are happy to wake up to a voice in their head. Many already have lives and families they don’t want to leave behind. He tries, so hard, but he’s too old. Too other. Eventually the family they had before drifts away, unable to handle the changes as one life joins a multitude and he is alone with the voices in his head, again. Time to rebuild, again. Time to see if this time. Please, brothers, let this time be the last. 

_He tells himself, if he could do it again, he would refuse.  
He knows, though, that he wouldn’t.  
He wishes it was for a noble reason, to protect the world from Her._

_He knows better._

_He deserves this, after all._

She finds him again and again. Not often. No. Their battles are pointless and it is so much more interesting to Her to send out minions that will kill those that mean something to him. Still, every century or so, She pushes forward, striking Herself, trying to gather the relics and bring them together. To doom the world that isn’t ready, will probably never be ready, to face the judgement of the gods. He always manages to push Her back. Somehow. Often, though, this leads to him stuck in the dark depths of Her palace until his body gives in and he wakes again to restart the cycle anew.

He hates those times, but he also longs for them.

_He knows what it is, even if he won’t name it even in the safety of his mind.  
He has seen it in others, seen the same patterns.  
They give themselves over to partners who only pretend to love them.  
They suffer and leave and then go back_

She takes great pleasure in telling him how he fucked up this time. How he failed, how the mistakes he made had gifted Her with victories that bring them ever closer to the end. He might have stopped Her this time, but the price was immense and it was all his fault. She delights in reminding him how many people left him this time. She lists their names with relish, remembering all of them. She tells him that She is all he has. She is the only one who will ever care. The only one who will never leave him, never betray him, never accuse him. She is the only one who he can trust, even if it is only trusting that She will never change and She will never leave and She will never stop hunting him when he escapes.

He knows it’s a lie. He knows that he cannot control everything and that not every death he can take the blame for himself. Yet, Her words are honeyed poison and he is old and tired. He cannot escape Her except through yet another death, so he lets Her do whatever She wants. He becomes numb to it. The pain of Her torture, the gentleness of her caresses, the aching isolation, the desperate need to be loved even if that love is monstrous.

He hates it, but he loves it.

_He wonders if She was always like this and he just didn’t notice  
He wonders if something about his first death broke Her_

_But mostly_

_He wonders why mortals who suffer the same fate are gifted empathy and mercy  
And he is left cold and alone_

Eventually, the damage She inflicts overwhelms his body and everything goes briefly dark and he longs for it to just end, before he realises that it is starting again.

He doesn’t know if it is punishment or encouragement that, every time She manages to get him and hold him for a time, his next reincarnation is young and vibrant and surrounded by love and warmth and family. He would like to think it is a small gift from the Brother of Light, to give him a chance to recover. He is not sure he has faith enough for that any more. At first the warmth and love comforted him, let the fresh wounds at least scab over, if not scar. As it happens again and again, though, the warmth and love leave him feeling increasingly cold.

_He wonders what would happen if he told someone  
Not the gods, not the relics or magic or anything else_

_Just Her and what She did_

_He’s afraid to, though, he’s afraid that She would be right  
That even in this, it is his fault, for ever loving Her in the first place_

He tries not to let that inward cold affect those around him. He struggles sometimes, but for the most part he feels like he has succeeded. He has to ask so much of the people around him, ask for them to sacrifice so much, he has to at least try to treat them like actual people and not disposable chess pieces. Even though he knows that it is bound to end the same way eventually. They will die. Sometimes they will die still hopeful and believing that they are saving the world. Sometimes they will die betrayed and broken, despair drawing the Grim like a beacon. Sometimes they die as traitors, seduced to Her service, knowingly or not, willingly or not.

He still tries. It gets harder with every passing life, but he tries.

Until he doesn’t.

Until he asks Jinn the question he has been terrified of asking for a millennium and receives the answer his heart already knew.

_You can’t  
You can’t. You can’t.  
Yoou can’t. You can’t. Youcant. **Youcantyoucantyoucant.**_

_The words echo around his mind over and over again.  
A part of him knows that the wording was clumsy at best  
The answer is open to interpretation  
Yet, it swims around in his head in an inescapable loop_

_Youcantyoucantyoucant_

_It means only one thing, to him_

_You will never be free_

_  
_

_She will **always** find you _

The life where he is Ozpin he looks into the mirror and sees silver and washed out green and imagines that the cold inside him has finally manifested as frost that clings to him. He feels, in some ways, like he is going through the motions. He has his close confidants, picked by hand for the strength of their souls, but he keeps them at arm’s length. He feels like he’s waiting for the inevitable betrayal. 

_He wonders what will happen if he says ‘not me’  
This time, you have to protect yourselves from Her  
Can you protect me at the same time?_

_Please_

_Someone_

Raven is first, unsurprisingly. She was never entirely content, always had her own goals and ambitions and not being willing to set them aside for her spouses or her daughter. Why would she do the same for him?

Then Summer dies. Well, he assumes so. The silver eyes made her a target and he almost regrets teaching her to use them, but if he didn’t then her father would have or she’d have learnt for herself. There is no body, her grave stands empty, but he has seen this happen too many times before to believe for a second she still lives.

He deliberately doesn’t go and visit her family. He knows she has a daughter of her blood as well as of heart. He does not want to know if the baby has silver eyes or not. If he doesn’t know, he can’t put her in the same firing line as her mother.

Qrow almost drinks himself to death and he can’t bring himself to say anything that would stop it. He wouldn’t blame the man for giving into his despair.

_Silver eyes aren’t a dominant trait, but they aren’t random either  
He can’t look at children with those eyes though_

_Not after the first time_

_He doesn’t know if it was Her spell or his that killed them, but he knows it was his fault  
He should have just stayed_

_He shouldn’t have tried to take Her children away_

She is quiet. She has been quiet since the last great war, hunting down silver-eyed families notwithstanding. That usually means She is planning something big.

Headmasters retire and are replaced by people he hopes will stand tall under the weight of expectation. 

A maiden vanishes, unable to cope with the weight of her gifts. He isn’t surprised. She isn’t the first, she won’t be the last. He still tries to find her. As much as he would like to let her live out her life in obscurity, he knows it is too dangerous. Last time he allowed that, she was killed by one of Her minions and She came dangerously close to having a maiden on her side for the first time since the relics were locked away in the academies.

Another maiden is attacked and part of her powers stolen. He doesn’t know how, this is a new weapon of Hers and he worries. He can’t protect the maidens from something he knows nothing about. He can’t protect the relics if She claims the powers of a maiden for herself.

_He wonders what his latest group of confidants would say  
If he told them She had gotten Her hands on a relic before  
He is only glad it was not the Relic of Knowledge  
She was always better than him at finding the right words  
It would already be over, if She had gotten the lamp _

Time is passing faster than ever. Summer’s daughter is already fifteen and carries her mother’s eyes with her wherever she goes. He doesn’t want to let her into Beacon early, but with Amber comatose from this new weapon, he daren’t leave her unprotected. Beacon will put a target on her back, but also give her the means to protect herself. Taiyang isn’t happy, but allows it, because Ruby wants it so badly and her older sister is starting at Beacon herself.

The cracks are already forming, before James brings half the Atlas fleet to Vale. He wishes he was surprised, but he isn’t. He wishes he wasn’t disappointed, that he could just accept the inevitable and not get attached, but he can’t and he is. He thought the frost in his hair and his eyes and his soul would protect him, but it hasn’t. It just makes the fire that much more painful.

He dies trying to protect Amber and his students. He fails on all counts. His mistakes mount. In his last moments, knowing She has found herself a maiden to serve her, he wonders how She will punish his mistakes this time.

There isn’t enough left of him to hope that this will be the last time.

He will never escape her.

_Youcantyoucantyoucant_

Oscar is young. Painfully, frightfully young.

The first thing he does, before even saying hello, is lock away all the worst memories. If he has any say in the matter, Oscar won’t ever have to consciously acknowledge those memories. They will stay locked up until he cannot say where Oscar ends and he starts. It’s different, when the next host is older, they’re more prepared for the harsh realities. While Oscar is anything but stupid and naïve, there is still an innocence to him. He has grieved for the parents lost to him, but his aunt was right there to pick him up and hold him tight and he has already relearned how to smile. Seeing his memories, all the darkness and never-ending pain and guilt, would crush that smile and he can’t do it. Not to a boy as pure as Oscar.

_He doesn’t consider that Oscar might think of a different reason for the silence  
He doesn’t consider that Oscar might want to be informed  
Might have a right to be informed  
Oscar had no choice in this, just like Ozpin had no choice  
Only Ozma had a choice and he’d chosen poorly_

_Not that that was a surprise_

_She always said he couldn’t be trusted to make important decisions_

Events at Haven go… about as he expected, to be honest.

Or maybe not. For all that he has seen this happen again and again and again, the people as reflections of others that have gone before, they are still wholly themselves.

Raven might remind him of Weiryn, but she is not him. Her anger is more directionless, her hatred is for everyone but herself and for him most of all. Weiryn’s anger and pride were focused to the point of blinkers, seeing nothing but what he wished to see.

Qrow reminds him of Javier, but Javier did not have Qrow’s resilience. Misfortune might have made Qrow’s life exponentially harder, but he has simply cast himself in diamond to endure it. Of course, he is blind to his true worth, but his nieces seem prepared to make sure he doesn’t fall the way Javier had.

Ruby reminds him of Summer and Jessica and Kayla and Tomas and Piotr and dozens of other silver-eyed warriors. Yet, somehow, she is like none of them. She is entirely her own and each time he looks at her he is surprised by how she is growing. Almost seventeen and yet wiser than so many of her elders, even if she is still occasionally immature and too quick to act.

Still, in the end, they have the relic and Salem doesn’t.

He should have realised, though, that Pyrrha’s death, Qrow’s storytelling, Raven’s interference… they ask for no more secrets and he agrees, but he knows as he does so that he is lying. There are some things he just can’t share.

_Youcantyoucantyoucant_

He didn’t think the secrets were that important. He didn’t think that it would matter. He hadn’t realised that these almost-adults were demanding to be treated as such. He hadn’t realised he wasn’t. It had been literal decades, if not centuries, since there were this many people who knew about the relics and the maidens and Her. He had thought that would be enough.

It isn’t.

One more innocuous secret – the relic attracts Grim – and everything shatters. The cracks had already been running deep since the Fall of Beacon, but it is in that moment everything shatters completely.

_Youcantyoucantyoucant_

The train crashes.

They demand answers to questions they didn’t even know to ask. 

They demand he open up the worst of himself. A millennium of failing and failing and failing again. Of dying again and again and again. Of Her and always finding himself back in her clutches again, hating and loving it and wishing for it all to just stop.

He can’t do it. He can’t.

Then Oscar does it for him. Breaks the protections that keep the worst of everything from his young mind and plucks out a single name before he manages to put the barriers back up.

And Ruby, bright, brilliant Ruby, who once trusted everyone has now learned how not to trust because she asks.

He is the one who taught her to question, to not to trust freely. He supposed it is only fitting that it is him who suffers the consequences. It is his own fault. Just like She always says.

He screams a final denial as the world melts around them, replaced by a painting of what once was.

_Youcantyoucantyoucant_

Jinn isn’t human, but she perhaps has some pity. She only shows that first battle between them, the one where he’d watched his children die. He supposes that she doesn’t need to show all the other times She had swooped in to destroy him from the inside out. She does show face after face after face, time passing and his ever-increasing exhaustion as he tries to find some way, anyway, to end this.

Then she shows the end. The one thing he doesn’t dare tell anyone. The one thing he can’t tell anyone.

_Youcantyoucantyoucant_

Then it is over.

All his worst parts, worst mistakes, exposed for this small group of people to cast judgement upon him.

He wishes he could hope.

He hasn’t had hope since Jinn had answered the question he already knew the answer to.

It has happened before

It will happen again.

And again. And again.

Thousands of years, hundreds of lives. The same story on repeat.

A punch to the jaw, striking the child who doesn’t have a choice in any of this.

“Meeting you was the worst luck of my life,”

“Maybe you’re right.”

_It wasn’t maybe_

_Oz already knew, he’d always known._

__

_He’d made more mistakes than anyone who had ever lived_

__

_They were all his fault_

__

_He knew it_

__

_After all, Salem said so._

__

__

_How do I destroy Salem?_

__

_**You can’t.**_

__


End file.
